Mcdonald died Sunday at his farm in Pulaski, Tennessee, about 60 miles southwest of Nashville, according to Mcdonald's manager, Dan List. List said Wednesday that Mcdonald had been diagnosed with cancer.
I absolutely fell in love with the first Fletch movie when it came out in 1985, and to this day I believe that role was tailor-made for Chevy Chase. The second movie pretty much stunk up the joint, though. But the first was pure genius. I read the movie tie-in when it came out, and was dazzled by the intricately tight plotting but also the quick pace and relentlessly witty dialog. It wasn't until a couple of years later, as a freshman in college, that I discovered that McDonald had actually written a whole series of Fletch books. Wow. Confess Fletch remains my favorite. Great, great stuff. The later reboot McDonald did, beginning with Fletch Won, seem to me a kind of forced, going-through-the-motions attempt to recapture the magic, and sadly they just don't work. But the early ones, wow, you can't beat them for a good time.
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